


In the Gray

by Capucine



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Gen, Guilt, Heavy Angst, Introspection, Morality, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 17:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8926657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capucine/pseuds/Capucine
Summary: How does Jason Todd sleep at night?
As rhetorical as that question might be, he manages.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This deals with heavy guilt and no uplifting ending. Be forewarned.

How do you live with crushing guilt?

Easy. You kill part of yourself.

Or so Jason would have liked to say. To imply that it was easy, that the guilt that threatened to suffocate him at night was something he could just switch off. The nights where black doubt plagued him and left him scrabbling for a reason to keep doing things the way he was.

Were things ruined between him and Bruce? Had he been the one to do that, or could he tell himself that Bruce did that? Had he been the one who slaughtered after his rise from the grave, or could he tell himself it was the pit? Could he tell himself that somehow wasn’t his fault?

Could he bargain with himself, could he promise he was better than the truly evil and put this ghost to rest? Could he drown out the red that threatened to cloud his soul, where there had once been a healthy, happy green? Could he have looked back at the child he’d been and seen anything except contempt in that child’s eyes?

Perhaps horror. Perhaps agony and despair if he knew this red hooded figure was supposed to be him.

And that was about when Jason would wake up from his almost sleep, in a sweat, unable to fix any of it, because it was too big. All of the evils of the world were too big, but so was the guilt that ate him alive.

He also wondered if he even deserved to be resurrected. There were many others who had fallen, even regular folks, not just ‘heroes.’ Why him?

But living in the gray was what he did. It was who he was, in many ways, he told himself, in order to keep the heroes’ squeaky clean hands exactly that way. Because this system couldn’t work without someone willing to do the dirty work.

Even if Bruce couldn’t see that, he was helping.

He was helping.

And that let him sleep for a couple more hours.

**Author's Note:**

> I just feel like this occasionally, especially around Christmas. Not one hundred percent certain why.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the sads.


End file.
